A, You're Adorable
by jlm110108
Summary: A series of short stories based on the old song, A, You're Adorable.  These were written for the summer alphabet challenge.
1. A, You're Adorable

Alan Eppes was excited. It was Friday night, and he was going to stay up until 8:00 so he could watch the brand new television series on the Eppes family's brand new television. Now that he was in fourth grade, he was being given more and more privileges. Of course, as his mom explained, more privileges meant more responsibilities. 

So, in exchange for being allowed to watch the premiere of "Bozo the Clown," Alan finished his homework, walked and fed the dog, cleaned his room, and helped mom set the table. Now, he was sitting in the living room, listening to the radio, reading the funny papers and waiting for Daddy to come home for dinner.

He had just finished reading "Gasoline Alley" when he heard the front door open. "Daddy!" he ran to greet his father. "I did all my chores!"

Dad put down his briefcase, hung up his coat and hat and bent to give his son a hug. "That's great, Kiddo! You ready to watch Bozo tonight?"

"You betcha, Dad! I can't wait!"

"Don!" Mom called from the kitchen, "Welcome home!" She came into the foyer, wiping her hands on her apron, and threw her arms around her husband's neck, "Alan has been so helpful today!"

Alan rolled his eyes as Mom and Dad kissed. "I'm gonna go back and read the funnies."

Dad reached out and ruffled Alan's hair. "We'll be right in, Kiddo."

A few minutes later, the new Perry Como song came on the radio. It was the number one song, and it got played over and over and over again. Alan was getting tired of it, and cringed when he heard his dad start to sing along with the radio. "A, you're adorable, b, you're so beautiful..." He giggled as Mom and Dad danced into the room, just like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Dad twirled Mom until they were next to Alan's chair. Dad pulled Alan to his feet as he continued to sing, "C, you're a cutie full of charm..."


	2. B, You're So Beautiful

"B, you're so beautiful" 

Alan waited for Margaret's class to finish. With her in law school, and him working as a low level civil servant in the city's engineering department, they could only afford one car. This meant juggling schedules, carpooling and occasionally resorting to public transit.

He was proud of Margaret's accomplishments. Getting into law school was not easy. But occasionally he wished they lived the way his parents had – with Dad working and Mom staying at home. Of course, now it was the '70s, the era of women's rights, and not the Leave it to Beaver world he grew up in. It was also an era when it was becoming increasingly harder to live on one income. Once Margaret finished law school, her income as a lawyer would make life a lot easier. Maybe they'd even have enough money to buy a house and start a family.

As he sat in the driver's seat, reading the newspaper, he turned to the comics. Gasoline Alley had been replaced by Funky Winkerbean, and papers were debating whether to put Doonesbury on the comics page or the editorial page. But he remembered sitting in the living room on the couch with that awful flowered slip cover, reading the funnies, listening to the radio and waiting for Dad to come home for supper. And his mom and dad singing and dancing together like kids. He was smiling, humming to himself, when the passenger's side door opened.

There she was, the most beautiful woman in the world, his Margaret. Well, of course, she was her own person and not his property, but he was still amazed at his good fortune every time he thought of her. She leaned across to kiss him. "Hi, Sweetie. Sorry I kept you waiting."

"I would wait for you forever," he said, pulling her into a hug.

He began singing as he pulled away from the curb, "B, you're so beautiful.."


	3. C, You're a Cutie Full of Charms

"C, you're a cutie full of charms

"Donnie!" Margaret called as she opened the front door. "Come on! We're going to be late."

"Okay, Mommy. I gotta find my bankie first."

Margaret smiled. "I've got your bankie, Sweetie. Come on."

Donnie came around the corner, staring at his mom. "You sure you got it?"

Margaret reached into the diaper bag and held up the tattered blue bankie. "See?"

Donnie nodded seriously. "Good." He walked through the door Margaret held open for him, then turned, his arms up, "Carry?"

Margaret shifted the diaper bag and her briefcase, then bent and lifted her three-year-old. "How can I resist?"

"What's resist mean?"

"It means to not do what you want me to do. It's like if I tell you it's bed time and you say no. That's resisting."

"Is resisting bad?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's good to resist. If somebody wants you to do something you're not supposed to do and you tell him no, then that's a good time to resist."

"But Mommies never tell their little boys to do bad things."

In her law practice, Margaret had seen some pretty awful mommies telling their kids to do some pretty awful things. But, looking into the trusting eyes of her baby boy, she said, "Donnie, I will never tell you to do anything bad."

Donnie pushed back a little so he could study his mommy's face carefully. Then, with a serious expression on his face, he nodded. "I trust you, Mommy. I won't resist."

As Margaret strapped Donnie into his car seat, she started singing softly, "C, you're a cutie full of charms..."

"Mommy? What's charms?"


	4. D, You're a Darling

"D, You're a Darling" 

It was nearly midnight. Don and Terry had been working on a case for over two weeks now, and neither had had a chance to do their laundry. Being a guy, Don was perfectly happy pulling socks from the pile and smelling them until he found two that didn't smell too bad. But by the end of the case, Terry was almost as stressed out by the state of her wardrobe as she was by the need to find the serial killer quickly.

So Don had made a suggestion. "How about we gather up all our laundry and drag it over the laundromat near your apartment? That way we can use as many machines as we need and get it done quickly."

Terry grinned, "And you can protect me from the creeps in my neighborhood."

"Nah. You're a trained killer, Lake. You can handle yourself. I figured you could protect me."

Terry laughed. "Okay, it's a date!"

"All right. I'll go home and get my stuff, then stop by and pick you up. It'll be easier to drive over than to carry all that stuff."

"This time of night we should be able to find a parking spot."

Don shrugged. "If not, I'll just put my FBI sign on the dashboard and park in a loading zone."

Sure enough, when Don and Terry came down the front steps of her building, she looked at his car and laughed. The white sign with FBI OFFICIAL BUSINESS printed in black was prominently displayed on the dash. He opened the door and they put her laundry baskets on the back seat next to his. "Something smells good," she said.

"I figured you'd be hungry so I stopped and picked up a pizza." He gestured at a box balanced precariously on top of one of his laundry baskets.

By the time they settled down to watch the washing machines and eat their pizza, it was nearly 2 in the morning. Don bought sodas from the vending machine and they relaxed for the first time in weeks.

He pulled a folding chair over to put his feet on. Terry pushed her chair closer and put her feet beside his. He rested his arm on the back of her chair, and she leaned against it. "So, Lake," Don murmured, "tell me something I don't know about the real Terry Lake."

"Hmm, you mean like a deep, dark secret?"

"Anything. It doesn't have to be deep or dark. Just something I don't know. It shouldn't be hard. We've only worked together for six months."

Terry laughed. "Okay, well, I just broke up with my fiance."

Don raised his eyebrows. "Now, that's interesting."

"Your turn. Tell me something I don't know about the mysterious Don Eppes."

"Mysterious? I don't think so."

"Hey, all the girls in the office are falling over each other to get to know you just a little better."

"Really?"

"No. Not all of them. One or two are happily married. So, give. What's one thing I don't know about you?"

Don leaned back and rubbed his chin. "I haven't had a date since I moved to DC."

Terry touched her soda can to his in a toast. "Well, you have now."

The next morning, as Terry stood in her kitchen, making a pot of coffee, Don came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. He nuzzled her neck and sang softly in her ear, "D, you're a darling and E, you're exciting..."


	5. E, You're Exciting

"E, You're Exciting"

Charlie Eppes' life had been an exciting one so far. Unfortunately, that excitement was primarily intellectual, and at 20 years of age, he had the same hormonal drives as any other young man. He had spent his whole life with a grown-up intellect in a little kid's body. Now, finally, he was cruising into adulthood, and the age difference, while still there, was not the unbridgeable chasm it had been before. A twenty year old mixing with twenty five to thirty year olds was not as bad as a thirteen year old mixing with eighteen year olds.

Now, finishing up his first doctorate, he was away from his family, living, studying and teaching at the Isaac Newton Institute at Cambridge University in England. And he was ready to stretch his wings. As a graduate student, he had to tread carefully, but he found himself attracted to a pretty blonde tutor, Dr. Susan Berry. He rationalized that since he wasn't studying with Susan, she was fair game. And since she had seemed open to his casual flirting so far, he decided to take a chance.

"Susan," he said, jogging to catch up with her as she crossed the quad.

"Charlie!" she turned, smiling. "How are you?"

"Wonderful. How about you?"

"Fine, thank you. What can I do for you?"

"Well, I'm trying to – uh – immerse myself in the culture here. And I was wondering if you would accompany me to the Lent Bumps. I, uh, don't know much about rowing, and I understand it's an important part of Cambridge life."

Susan laughed, pressing her fingers to his lips. "Hush, Charlie. I'll go with you."

Charlie blinked in surprise. He had expected to have to talk her into it. He smiled and she removed her fingers from his lips. "You will?"

"Yes." She touched his curls. "Why wouldn't I?"

The March morning air was crisp, to say the least. Charlie, accustomed to the warmth of southern California, hunched deep into his coat. Susan took his arm, put it over her shoulders and snuggled against him. "We might as well share what little body heat we have," she murmured.

That day, Charlie paid more attention to the woman beside him than to the boats racing in front of him. His life had been intellectually exciting to this point. Now the pretty blonde snuggled against him promised a whole different kind of excitement. And Charlie Eppes was ready. He kissed her ear and an old song suddenly popped into his head from nowhere. He smiled and sang, "E, you're exciting..."


	6. G, You Look Good to Me

"G, You Look Good to Me"

Professor Larry Fleinhardt had accepted the fact that he was not, nor would he ever be, what the undergraduates called a chick magnet. In his experience, it was the men like Don, Colby, and David to whom the women flocked. Not an eccentric, diminutive cosmologist whose voice tended to squeak at the most inopportune moments.

But then tall, slender, ravishingly beautiful Megan Reeves had walked into his life. The genesis of their relationship had not been auspicious. She had teased him about his tray full of white food. Now, he was unable to recall exactly how he had responded, but she had laughed. And since she was on Don Eppes' team, a team which consulted with increasing frequency with Larry's best friend and colleague, Charles Eppes, his interactions with the striking agent also increased in frequency.

Then, one day, with his customary awkwardness, he had had the temerity to ask her out to dinner. And incredibly, she had assented. Even more incredibly, their relationship had grown and flourished. In spite of the outward differences, they found that they had a lot of things in common. And the things they didn't have in common, they found that they enjoyed learning from each other.

One of the things they had in common was the love of Larry's vintage car. Tonight they had attended a big band concert, and they exited the theater arm in arm, humming old standards. Opening the passenger's side door for his beloved, Larry touched Megan's hair. "I am still amazed that, out of all the men in this world, I was the one fortunate enough to have inexplicably captured your heart. I am not deluded enough to think that I am physically attractive and ..."

Megan wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close, silencing him with a kiss. When they came up for air, she smiled and sang, "G, you look good to me."


End file.
